But not infrequently the sculptor and the painter upset the equilibrium of the work of others by doing things which are out of key or out of proportion. The “fine artist” may bring the work of decorating to a standstill by painting spotty easel pictures on walls that should be treated in harmony with the entire building and with its uses.
The time will come when art schools will teach pure color composition as well as drawing and the painting of pictures.
Why should not prizes be offered for color harmonies?
As it is now pupils are taught everything except the use of color for the sake of color.
What is a “still life”? Simply a painting of a number of objects selected and arranged primarily for their color notes. Why not paint the notes without the fruit and dishes?
So far as the color harmony is concerned the figure of an orange, an apple, a banana is not essential; in reality the photographic realization distracts. But the public is not accustomed to pure color music, it is not accustomed to seeing canvases that contain only color harmonies with no suggestion of object or form, it demands that the note of yellow shall be a lemon or a banana, that the note of purple shall assume the shape of a plum and so on, and so on; yet all the time the enjoyment derived from a fine “still life” is from the harmony that results from the combination of colors, and in no sense from the objects arbitrarily and artificially grouped together.
The use of line and color imitatively to depict objects is one thing.